Law Commons^™

Appraisal Discrimination: Five Lessons For Litigators, Heather R. Abraham

Journal Articles

Appraisal discrimination not only persists, but its influence has actually increased in some housing markets. New studies document how contemporary appraisal methods operate as systemic racism, such as how appraisers select from a narrower set of comparable properties when appraising homes in predominantly Black neighborhoods. Recent events have renewed public attention to appraisal discrimination, from shocking news stories to a new multiagency federal task force. In tandem, a new wave of litigation has emerged. This Article examines litigation as one element of a multifaceted approach to combatting appraisal discrimination. After examining the weaknesses of the regulatory framework governing appraisals, this …

Segregation Autopilot: How The Government Perpetuates Segregation And How To Stop It, Heather R. Abraham

Journal Articles

Housing segregation is a defining feature of the American landscape. Scholars have thoroughly documented the government’s historic collusion in segregating people by race. But far from correcting its reprehensible past, the government continues to perpetuate housing segregation today. As if on autopilot, its spending and regulatory activities routinely reinforce housing segregation. Not only is this immoral and bad policy, it is against the law. The government has a statutory duty to conduct its business in a manner that reduces housing segregation. This duty arises from a unique civil rights directive passed by Congress over fifty years ago in the Fair …

Fair Housing’S Third Act: American Tragedy Or Triumph?, Heather R. Abraham

Journal Articles

Fifty-two years ago, Congress enacted a one-of-a-kind civil rights directive. It requires every federal agency—and state and local grantees by extension—to take affirmative steps to undo segregation. In 2020, this overlooked Fair Housing Act provision—the “affirmatively furthering fair housing” or “AFFH” mandate—has heightened relevance. Perhaps most visible is Donald Trump’s racially charged “protect the suburbs” campaign rhetoric. In an apparent appeal to suburban constituents, his administration repealed a race-conscious fair housing rule, replacing it with a no-questions-asked regulation that elevates “local control” above civil rights.

The maneuver is especially stark as protesters fill the streets, marching in opposition to systemic …

A Silent Struggle: Constitutional Violations Against The Hearing Impaired In New York State Prisons, Farina Barth

Journal Articles

No abstract provided.

After Legal Equality: Family, Sex, Kinship, Edited By Robert Leckey, Michael Boucai

Book Reviews

No abstract provided.

Is Assisted Procreation An Lgbt Right?, Michael Boucai

Journal Articles

A movement long identified with the notion that “love makes a family” today flirts dangerously with the dogma that “blood is thicker than water.” Biogeneticism, an ideology that favors biological modes of kinship and genetic conceptions of identity, informs many LGBT individuals’ choices about why and how to have children. In turn this ideology marks two troubling features of political efforts to facilitate LGBT parenthood: first, the markedly different understandings of equality — full versus formal, lived versus legal — that guide movement approaches to assisted procreation and adoption, respectively; and second, invocations of a fundamental “right to procreate” that …

Latcrit Praxis @ Xx: Toward Equal Justice In Law, Education And Society, Tayyab Mahmud, Athena D. Mutua, Francisco Valdes

Journal Articles

This article marks the twentieth anniversary of Latina and Latino Critical Legal Theory or the LatCrit organization, an association of diverse scholars committed to the production of knowledge from the perspective of Outsider or OutCrit jurisprudence. The article first reflects on the historical development of LatCrit’s substantive, methodological, and institutional commitments and practices. It argues that these traditions were shaped not only by its members’ goals and commitments but also by the politics of backlash present at its birth in the form of the “cultural wars,” and which have since morphed into perpetual “crises” grounded in neoliberal policies. With this …

Substantive Due Process For Noncitizens: Lessons From Obergefell, Anthony O'Rourke

Journal Articles

The state of Texas denies birth certificates to children born in the United States — and thus citizens under the Fourteenth Amendment — if their parents are undocumented immigrants with identification provided by their home countries’ consulates. What does this have to do with same-sex marriage? In a previous article, I demonstrated that the Court’s due process analysis in United States v. Windsor is particularly relevant to the state’s regulation of undocumented immigrants. This short essay builds upon my earlier analysis by examining Obergefell v. Hodge’s applications outside the context of same-sex marriage. Obergefell’s due process holding, I …

Glorious Precedents: When Gay Marriage Was Radical, Michael Boucai

Journal Articles

In the years immediately following the Stonewall riots of June 1969, a period when “gay liberation” rather than “gay rights” described the ambitions of a movement, three marriage cases made their way to and beyond trial: Baker v. Nelson in Minnesota, Jones v. Hallahan in Kentucky, and Singer v. Hara in Washington State. This article offers a detailed account of that early trilogy. Drawing on extensive archival research and on interviews with key players in each case, it shows that, contrary to received wisdom, Stonewall-era marriage litigation was faithful to gay liberation’s radical aspirations. The Baker, Jones, and Singer lawsuits …

Windsor Beyond Marriage: Due Process, Equality & Undocumented Immigration, Anthony O'Rourke

Journal Articles

The Supreme Court’s recent decision in United States v. Windsor, invalidating part of the federal Defense of Marriage Act, presents a significant interpretive challenge. Early commentators have criticized the majority opinion’s lack of analytical rigor, and expressed doubt that Windsor can serve as a meaningful precedent with respect to constitutional questions outside the area of same-sex marriage. This short Article offers a more rehabilitative reading of Windsor, and shows how the decision can be used to analyze a significant constitutional question concerning the use of state criminal procedure to regulate immigration.

From Windsor’s holding, the Article distills …

Vicki Eaklor's Queer America: A People's History Of The United States (Book Review), Michael Boucai

Book Reviews

No abstract provided.

Sexual Liberty And Same-Sex Marriage: An Argument From Bisexuality, Michael Boucai

Journal Articles

In Lawrence v. Texas (2003), the U.S. Supreme Court recognized a right to choose homosexual relations and relationships. Same-sex marriage bans unconstitutionally burden this right because they have the purpose and effect of channeling individuals into heterosexual relations and relationships. Bisexuals are in the best position to raise this claim because they share homosexuals’ interest in the freedom to choose same-sex partners, yet are more easily steered toward different-sex partners by marriage’s enormous prestige and benefits.

An argument from bisexuality for same-sex marriage refutes on normative rather than empirical grounds what this article calls “the politics of containment,” a politics …

Sexual Epistemology And Bisexual Exclusion: A Response To Russell Robinson's "Masculinity As Prison: Race, Sexual Identity, And Incarceration", Michael Boucai

Journal Articles

No abstract provided.

Fred Fejes' Gay Rights And Moral Panic: The Origins Of America's Debate On Homosexuality (Book Review), Michael Boucai

Book Reviews

No abstract provided.

Book Review, Margot Canaday, The Straight State: Sexuality And Citizenship In Twentieth-Century America, Michael Boucai

Book Reviews

No abstract provided.

"Balancing Your Strengths Against Your Felonies": Considerations For Military Recruitment Of Ex-Offenders, Michael Boucai

Journal Articles

Existing work on ex-offenders’ access to military employment too narrowly represents both the Armed Forces’ and the public’s interests in the issue. This Article proposes to shift the conversation from ex-offenders’ usefulness to the Armed Forces to the reciprocal responsibilities and benefits involved for these potential recruits, the military, and society at large. Part One reviews the rules, policies, and procedures governing the “moral waivers” that allow thousands of individuals with criminal histories to enlist each year, and it shows that that the waiver system nonetheless often fails to detect the criminal backgrounds of many recruits. Part Two reviews some …

A Legal Remedy For Homophobia: Finding A Cure In The International Right To Health, Michael Boucai

Journal Articles

This article argues that the international right to health obligates governments to combat homophobia. Part One presents the powerful evidence that stigma, prejudice, and violence directed toward lesbian and gay people drastically endanger their physical and mental well-being. Part Two defends an expansive interpretation of the international right to health. Applying this interpretation, Part Three proposes that gay men and lesbians are entitled to demand that their governments to eliminate all public and much private discrimination against gay men and lesbians, and requires them to combat homophobia through education and other positive efforts. Acknowledging that this obligation is unlikely to …

Caught In A Web Of Ignorances: How Black Americans Are Denied Equal Protection Of The Laws, Michael Boucai

Journal Articles

No abstract provided.

Racial Purity Laws In The United States And Nazi Germany: The Targeting Process, Judy Scales-Trent

Journal Articles

No abstract provided.

Oppression, Lies, And The Dream Of Autonomy, Judy Scales-Trent

Journal Articles

No abstract provided.

Section 98 And The Specialized Practice Of Civil Rights Law, James A. Gardner

Journal Articles

No abstract provided.

Civil Rights And Self-Concept: Life Stories Of Law, Disability, And Employment, David M. Engel, Frank W. Munger

Journal Articles

No abstract provided.

Sex-Blind, Separate But Equal, Or Anti-Subordination? The Uneasy Legacy Of Plessy V. Ferguson For Sex And Gender Discrimination, Lucinda M. Finley

Journal Articles

No abstract provided.

Institutional Myths, Historical Narratives And Social Science Evidence: Reading The "Record" In The Virginia Military Institute Case, Dianne Avery

Journal Articles

No abstract provided.

Did The Slaves Author The Thirteenth Amendment? An Essay In Redemptive History, Guyora Binder

Journal Articles

American constitutional interpretation is deeply traditionalist, and privileges original intent. The difficulty with thus authorizing the past in interpreting the Thirteenth Amendment is that it purports to abolish custom and tradition as unjust. This essay argues that, given the Amendment’s denunciation of the polity that enacted it as illegitimate, its questionable formal pedigree, and the agency of the slaves in precipitating, defining, and resolving the crisis that enabled it, the slaves have a moral claim to status as its authors. It follows that the original intent guiding interpretation should be that of the slaves themselves.

The Daughters Of Job: Property Rights And Women's Lives In Mid-Nineteenth-Century Massachusetts, Dianne Avery, Alfred S. Konefsky

Journal Articles

No abstract provided.

On Hegel, On Slavery, But Not On My Head!, Guyora Binder

Journal Articles

This Article, a sequel to “Mastery, Slavery and Emancipation,” amplified its claims that slaves conceptualized freedom primarily in solidaristic terms as social and political participation, and recognition rather than as individual autonomy or economic opportunity. It replied to skeptical objections offered by Critical Race Theorist Kendall Thomas and offered a solidaristic reading of the autobiographies of Fredercik Douglass and Sellah Martin.

School Desegregation In Buffalo: The Hold Of History, Judy Scales-Trent

Journal Articles

No abstract provided.

Mastery, Slavery, And Emancipation, Guyora Binder

Journal Articles

Hegel's dialectic of master and slave in the Phenomenology of Mind portrays a master unable to win genuine recognition from a slave because unwilling to confer it. The dialectic implies that freedom has to be conceived as association based on mutual respect, rather than independence. This article offers a communitarian interpretation of emancipation inspired by Hegel's dialectic of master and slave. It proceeds from an account of slave society which, like Hegel's dialectic, equates slavery with the denial of social recognition. This account argues that the experience of slave society led both the masters and the slaves to conceive of …

A Judge Shapes And Manages Institutional Reform: School Desegregation In Buffalo, Judy Scales-Trent

Journal Articles

No abstract provided.